Robert Benchley Quotes

Mike Judge is my Jonathan Swift, and I say that because I don't know any other satirists. But the problem with satire is that it's so easily misinterpreted.

The minute you're laughing, some people will say you're laughing at people.

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.

You know, I think it's one of those cases where the situation really does dictate your level of ridicule.

You had to learn at a certain age what sarcasm is, you know?

It is an occupational hazard to be quoted out of context.

There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world. One way is to put nonsense in the right place; as when people put nonsense into nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense in the wrong place; as when they put it into educational addresses, psychological criticisms, and complaints against nursery rhymes or other normal amusements of mankind.

Uh, my lord, I am not actually food. You do realize this, yes?

Be careful -- with quotations, you can damn anything.

When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric.

Ridicule often checks what is absurd, and fully as often smothers that which is noble.

It's just easier to make fun and cut down. It's kind of a way of life in America. If you can make people want to hear what you're going to say, it can be cruel and funny.

Pornography is a satire on human pretensions.

You see, that is the sad, sorry, terrible thing about sarcasm. It's really funny.

Laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature: delight hath a joy in it either permanent or present; laughter hath only a scornful tickling.

We reserve the right to make fun of every single person on planet Earth.

To be looked upon as a fool by an idiot is a true connoisseur's delight.

Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Windlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords?

Mock mockers after that That would not lift a hand maybe To help good, wise or great To bar that foul storm out, for we Traffic in mockery.

Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous.

Humor does not include sarcasm, invalid irony, sardonicism, innuendo, or any other form of cruelty. When these things are raised to a high point they can become wit, but unlike the French and the English, we have not been much good at wit since the days of Benjamin Franklin.

It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind.

I like sarcasm. I like snark.